Saturday, August 16, 2014

From ‘10 Billion’ by Stephen Emmott

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUON) – the world’s leading authority on biodiversity – estimates that, as of
2012, 41 per cent of all amphibians, 33 per cent of all reef-building corals,25
per cent of all mammals and 13 per cent of all birds are at imminent risk of
extinction.

We are now almost certainly losing species at a rate up to
one thousand times faster than we would expect from ordinary ‘background’
(natural) processes.

This means that human activity is almost certainly now set
to cause the greatest mass extinction of life on Earth since the event that
wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Since 1900, the percentage of the world’s oceans either
fully exploited (no fish left) or over exploited (fully exploited without
significant action) has risen from less than ten per cent, to 87 per cent. We
are harvesting ocean ecosystems at a rate which is completely unsustainable.

Right now, over one billion people are living in conditions
of extreme water shortage.

….demand for land for food is going to double – at least –
by 2050, and triple – at least – by the end of this century.

This means that pressure to clear many of the world’s
remaining tropical forests – rain forests – for human use is going to intensify
every decade. Because this is predominantly the only available land that is
left for expanding agriculture at scale. Unless Siberia thaws out before we
finish deforestation….If Siberia does thaw out …..it would result in a vast
amount of new land being available for agriculture, as well as opening up a
very rich source of minerals, metals, oil and gas. In the process this would
almost certainly completely change global geopolitics. Siberia thawing would
turn Russia into a remarkable economic and political force this century…..

It is now very likely that we are looking at a future global
average rise of 4 degrees – and we can’t rule out a rise of 6 degrees….will be
absolutely catastrophic. It will lead to runaway climate change, capable of
tipping the planet into an entirely different state, rapidly. Earth would
become a hell hole…..

But even if we’re lucky enough to fall short of anything
like a 4- to 6-degree rise in global temperature, there almost certainly won’t
be a country called Bangladesh by the end of this century – it will be under
water.

Large parts of Africa will become permanent disaster areas.
The Amazon could be turned into savannah or even desert.